Canada is on the cusp of a bioeconomic revolution. With its foundation of expansive forests and agricultural land, Canada is poised to unlock the value of its bio-based resources potential.

The Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) has a big mandate.

With increasing urbanization comes an increased tax on our environment and its ability to sustain us.

Resolute Forest Products recently announced a $27 million investment to build a 21 tonne per day cellulose filaments plant at its Kénogami paper mill, to start up in 2021.

If you’ve worked for more than one employer in your career, or even for the same company under different leaders, you’ll be very aware that when goals are not very well defined, productivity can suffer, and you and your colleagues could even be working at cross-purposes.

Last year I had the experience of driving along the east coast of South Africa north of Durban. For most of the journey, the surrounding land had rather scrubby vegetation: widely-spaced bushes.

Lignin is gaining an ever increasing interest from researchers as well as from forest, plastic and energy industries. Having been mainly regarded and used as an energy source by the pulp and paper industry in the past, it is now also seen as a renewable raw material with great potential for an array of products replacing those fossil-based.

Nanocellulose is perhaps not on everyone’s lips but is a widely spread buzz word within our industry. A “googling” on the word nanocellulose while writing this article resulted after a search time of 0.45 seconds in some 701,000 hits. So the topic is obviously a hot one.

The pulp and paper industry is of great importance to the Finnish economy and accounts for more than 20 % of the country’s export value. In addition to that Finland has well-known consultant companies and a substantial mechanical industry producing equipment and services for the pulp and paper industry worldwide.

With over $2.9B U.S. in revenue from exports of commercial pulp, tissue paper and other forest products in more than 70 countries, Resolute Forest Products (RFP) couldn’t really be faulted for deciding to sit pretty and enjoy the ride of being a Canadian leader in its field.

Kruger uses the best technology to produce high-end tissue

If you work in the pulp and paper industry, chances are you've come across the term circular economy, which has been creating a lot of hype as of late.

In my last blog, I emphasized that Green Chemistry Principles provide useful, actionable ways to drive innovation strategies and accelerate transformation in the pulp and paper (P&P) industry. Here, I will focus on a facilitating technology in the development and implementation of biomolecules, biomaterials, and bioproducts from biorefinery: molecular modeling (MM).

Increased level of pollution worldwide (soil, air and water) calls for urgent action and scalable solutions.

The Kraft pulping process, patented in 1879 and implemented in 1890, has shown resilience for more than 100 years, as it provides higher pulp strength and allows for about 98% of chemicals recovery cycle and energy efficiency.

A new federal mandate is expected to come into effect next year making electronic logging devices (ELDs) mandatory for federally-regulated motor carriers and their drivers.

You’re staying at home doing your part, at least for the next few weeks. You want to learn how to save fuel costs and boost productivity. Springtime, aka training season, is finally here.

The Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) of American Trucking Associations has released the much-anticipated results of PIT Group’s analysis of TMC’s proprietary fuel-economy calculator.

PPEC’s popular fact sheets have been revamped and updated, all 34 of them. Broken into five sections of interest, the factsheets cover a broad range of topics: from why packaging exists to where it comes from (trees); from what it’s made from to how it’s made; and to the industry’s history of reduction, re-use, and recycling.

Vancouver-based environmental group Canopy continues to make embarrassing boo-boos about paper packaging in Canada. In a blog entitled “What’s in the Box? Canopy answers its own question with a bald-faced lie, giving the impression that paper boxes are mostly made from virgin market pulp.

Report card time! We’ve graded the 22 different material categories used by Ontario’s Blue Box system according to their most recent (2018) “sent for recycling” numbers.

Global trade of softwood logs in 2019 remained practically unchanged from 2018 at 93 million m3. As much as 45% of globally shipped logs were destined for China.

Sawlog costs, which often account for more than two-thirds of the production costs, have fallen substantially in Central Europe in 2019 making the sawmilling sector in the region more competitive. The European Sawlog Price Index in the 3Q/19 was 35% lower than its record high in 2011.

Softwood pulplog prices fell in the key markets of Europe in the fall of 2019. This price decline contributed to a two-year low of the Softwood Fiber Price Index (SFPI) in the 3Q/19, according to the WRQ. With the hardwood fiber price movements having been mixed the past year, the Hardwood Fiber Price Index (HFPI) has not change much y-o-y.

As political and business leaders descend on Davos-Klosters (Switzerland) for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, issues related to climate change are looming larger than normal over this year’s gathering.

Forestry has long been foundational in the history, economy, and culture of Canada. More recently, it has figured prominently in what is fast becoming a global “cri de coeur” for environmental leadership and action on climate change.

Canada is a forest nation! With approximately 40% of our total area covered with forests or other wooded land, our forests play a vitally important role in supporting healthy communities.

Planar microwave moisture measurement, since its inception in 2000, continues to develop sophisticated instrumentation tools which greatly expand the utility of the technology into an ever-expanding range of papermaking applications. 

Introduction

As early as 2016, studies were introduced that showed numerous process control benefits that can be realized on paper machines equipped with the EasyScan traversing permeability, water content, and temperature measurement capabilities.

Introduction

In the day-to-day operation of paper machines, little thought is typically applied to carrier rope runs until something changes that affects downtime related to sheet transfers and/or rope replacement.

COVID-19 is having a huge impact on the world economy, the forest products industry is no exception, as many pulp, paper, and wood producers are slowing down their activities.

FPInnovations held the world's first platooning tests on forestry roads in Rivière-aux-Rats, near La Tuque, QC, last week, paving the way towards the use of autonomous vehicles.

The installation of a new turbine generator isn't expected to just generate new revenue for Domtar's Windsor, QC facility, it will also produce18 MW of electricity, optimize the mill's steam, all the while ensuring operational flexibility.

Held at FPInnovations headquarters in Pointe-Claire, Quebec, the 2018 edition of the Pulp, Paper and Bioproducts Course provided hands-on training to 45 participants coming from Canada and the United States.

On October 24, Kruger hosted nearly 100 employees, dignitaries and partners to celebrate the end of a project that saw a complete rebuild of a paper machine at its Trois-Rivières, QC, facility.

Cristini, a manufacturer of carrier rope, threading systems and spiral fabrics for filtration and paper machine dryer sections, recently celebrated its 20th anniversary in business in Lachute, QC.

A large-scale pilot plant at Resolute’s Thunder Bay mill will further develop FPInnovations’ patented process to produce “2G” sugars and hydrolysis lignin (H-lignin) using mechanical refining, mild chemical treatment and enzymatic hydrolysis.

Some companies have latched on to this visualization technology to make at-the-scene maintenance more time-effective and sure. Integration with the Industrial Internet (IoT) is essential to achieve it's full value potential.

Stora Enso and BillerudKorsnäs announce plans to phase in microfibrillated cellulose (MFC) in paperboard products. Lightweight milk cartons with Stora Enso MFC are already market tested.